External HDD unrecognized in Win10 but works fine in Win8.1

An external drive (Seagate Freeagent Xtreme 1.5TB) has some issues:

the filesystem cannot be recognized (1 NTFS partition but detected as RAW)
the drive cannot be accessed - an error pops up saying "Location inaccessible: No access to F:. Device is not ready."

However, it works fine if connected to another laptop running Win8.1.

The issue has shown up in the end of May, after some Win10 update. Unfortunately, I do not have a system restore point for these dates, so cannot restore the system state to a stable one.

I've tried the partition restore software and it finds the partition and its content fine.

The screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/BxdF6

UPD: the drive is discovered and IO operations work fine under Ubuntu on the same laptop, so this seems to be a some missing driver issue.

evictorov

Posted 2016-06-19T21:58:29.367

Reputation: 1

What do you get if you run fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo f: on the working laptop? – Ben N – 2016-06-19T22:19:27.923

@BenN it says: Error: The device is not ready.In order to run FSUTIL a local NTFS volume is required I'm using another language so translation may be not 100% correct. – evictorov – 2016-06-19T22:38:49.733

What happens if you try fsutil fsinfo sectorinfo f:? – Ben N – 2016-06-19T22:41:24.940

@BenN please find the screenshot: http://imgur.com/GsrCxVm

– evictorov – 2016-06-19T22:47:08.197

My Russian is a bit too rusty to read that. :P – Julie Pelletier – 2016-06-19T22:56:40.990

@JuliePelletier yep, sorry) Device alignment: unknown \nPartitions alignment on the device: unknown \nRuns normal searches \nCleaning not supported – evictorov – 2016-06-19T23:40:29.210

Run 'devmgmt.msc', 'show hidden devices' under view menu, 'uninstall the existing hard drive drivers. Reboot and let W10 install the compatible drivers. Was this an in place upgrade to windows 10? – jezr74 – 2016-06-20T00:47:52.953

@bokken74 yes, this was an upgrade from win10. The thing is it worked fine until some update in May. I've tried the device update method but it didn't succeed. – evictorov – 2016-06-27T20:39:50.630

Answers

Reinstall the driver in windows 10. Change the HDD letter from F: to something else.

I'd throw the kitchen sink at it from different angles and hope to get clues on what could be wrong.

iphar

Posted 2016-06-19T21:58:29.367

Reputation: 1

Thanks, tried both with no luck: (1) there's np specific driver for the device, it's just a USB drive; (2) can't change the letter as I receive an "Device is not ready" error. – evictorov – 2016-06-19T22:40:32.367

even more I can't uninstall the driver - I delete it and then Win10 installs a generic hard drive driver for it. I'm just stuck a bit - is there a kind of driver cache or anything like that? The issue is definitely with the driver but I just can't get it back to the normal working state. – evictorov – 2016-07-02T15:22:31.207

Is the External controller USB3 or USB2? Are you plugging the External HDD drive on the laptop through USB3 ports ? It is a wild guess, but try to update your mobo's CHIPSET and USB drivers if available

http://windowsreport.com/seagat-hard-drive-windows-10/

dExIT

Posted 2016-06-19T21:58:29.367

Reputation: 344